History of Collectibles lost/damaged due to Bitcointalk's image capabilities

[teeGUMES]

I'm not sure how important or valuable this is outside of Collectibles, but just recently I noticed that something I have collected and spent many many hours/funds on has been directly affected by outside forces and due to how the forum deals with images they may be lost forever.

My thread here is what I am talking about: [WoodCollector]Nine Public Coin Collection Completed and you're going to find what I am talking about by clicking into these parts of the OP
Coin #1
Coin #2
Coin #3
Coin #4
etc...

Up until something happened with the image host of WoodCollector's, someone that was interested in the story and the history of this could click into the WC quote and see photos and information about Coin 1, Coin 2, Coin 3, etc... Now they are greeted by this:

Obviously the imgur or whatever photo host he was using got nuked.


All fine and dandy thewaybackmachine has these archived... lets just check there..



In the Collectibles board we oftentimes have auctions or sales of coins that were released solely on bitcointalk.. linking back to the original sales threads almost always leads to a set of ugly white with red text blocks.. provenance is basically just now "take our words for it".
As bitcoin becomes more popular to the masses there are going to be people wanting coins/art/anything else interesting that may have been created here. I do feel as though the poor image management directly hits many of us Collector's in the pocket and will continue to in the future if something can't be changed here. I'm no website/server/image hosting genius but I would have paid/dumped all my merit or done any other thing of importance to have had those pictures preserved.

Save your WoodCollector is a scammer posts for somewhere else, this is about how we can protect the provenance of things created here and here only for future bitcoiners.

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[suchmoon]

The images are not lost as far as I can see, for example:

https://i.imgur.com/DZDpUfu.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/KqYKcu3.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/6NCHoV6.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/WhmWgyL.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/BTxqSTa.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Qw2Xzoc.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/a2CREht.jpg

Maybe imgur is blocking the Bitcointalk image proxy.

[teeGUMES]

The images are not lost as far as I can see, for example:

https://i.imgur.com/DZDpUfu.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/KqYKcu3.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/6NCHoV6.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/WhmWgyL.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/BTxqSTa.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Qw2Xzoc.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/a2CREht.jpg

Maybe imgur is blocking the Bitcointalk image proxy.

Thanks suchmoon, you're right if I quote the posts and enter the imgur links into my browser it does indeed pull up the pictures. Unable to do on the few that he locked but then it does seem strange that all of WoodCollector's photos show the invalid image. Every single one.

The above is just my own personal problem based on my emotional and financial interests, but I brought this all up for just more than my own problem..
Here's sort of what else I was talking about.. we have a sale for old Ravenbit coins going on right now here, but if you search for the original Ravenbit sales thread/creator heres what you get:
Ravenbit Creator's "Show all Topics" just take a scroll down.

There's a lot more like this in the history of the Collectibles board.. could you imagine if the same thing happened to casascius's posts?

[bL4nkcode]

I guess bitcointalk doesn't show any images without http(s)://?

I tried this

Only http://

Code:

https://i.imgur.com/DZDpUfu.jpg

And with https://

Code:

https://i.imgur.com/DZDpUfu.jpg

The same on ibb.co with http://

Code:

http://i.ibb.co/BLCKtcW/download.jpg

And https://

Code:

https://i.ibb.co/BLCKtcW/download.jpg

[LoyceV]

My guess it Bitcointalk doesn't host the pictures because this way copyright isn't the forum's problem:

If you are complaining about an image located at ip.bitcointalk.org: That image is hosted elsewhere, and we are only proxying it from the original location in order to protect user privacy. You should not complain to us.

I'm no website/server/image hosting genius but I would have paid/dumped all my merit or done any other thing of importance to have had those pictures preserved.

I'd love to see a community file hosting project for this. One of the rules for using it could be that anyone can mirror it, and if the domain name ever changes, Bitcointalk Admin could change all links on the forum to the new location.
I've lost images when tinypic.com disappeared, and now use loyce.club to host images, but chances are it won't be around 100 years from now. Since Bitcointalk is at the cradle of Bitcoin, it would indeed be nice if we can preserve as much as possible.

I guess bitcointalk doesn't show any images without http(s)://?

I don't use https and it works:

[ChiBitCTy]

I’m glad you brought this up Tee, I was planning to do the same. I noticed maybe within the last 2 weeks that all of a sudden many images were showing up invalid that weren’t just the week before or so.

I have used imgur for almost every image posted here via - forums bb code (Imgur mobile went to shit so just recently have used other services)..yet some of my oldest img posts stand and others have now got the red proxy of death. Pretty sure imgur never changed the http(s) for forum posts at random to cause this (I’m on mobile so harder to check atm). Also pondered if it had anything to do with being logged in to Imgur or not. Doubt it. I’m not sure if Imgur has an expiration feature or not, but I’m sure I’ve never enacted it.

Maybe an update here caused it? Anyway thought I’d share my experience.

[Nellayar]

In my old phone, when I am copying a link. It has "m" instead of "i". Just like this (http://m.imgur.com/DZDpUfu.jpg) so I usually change it to letter "i" (https://i.imgur.com/DZDpUfu.jpg). If you encounters like that, just try to change the letter "m" of letter "i".

Secondly. Just like what bL4nkcode also said, it needs to put "s" in {http://}

I am an imgur user and I usually uploaded it here before I am using the bbcode here. Recently, I cannot post pictures because it says invalid. Eventhough I did the 1st and 2nd tip in changing.

What I did?

I downloaded the imgur app in my phone, I created an account here and sign in.

Follow this steps:
Open the imgur app, then click the upload button. It shows below.



Next, click desired picture from your gallery and select "next"

Next step, you can public or hide your post. I preferred to select hidden and select "Upload".



Next, wait for your picture/s to upload. Then, go to your profile and look for your upload picture/s.



Here is the tricky part because I realized that copying the link in upper left part of screen gave me an invalid picture.



So what I do? I press the picture (long press) until this appear.



When it appears, select the "copy url" and it will give you the correct bb code.

I hope it helps you.

[ChiBitCTy]

In my old phone, when I am copying a link. It has "m" instead of "i". Just like this (http://m.imgur.com/DZDpUfu.jpg) so I usually change it to letter "i" (https://i.imgur.com/DZDpUfu.jpg). If you encounters like that, just try to change the letter "m" of letter "i".

Secondly. Just like what bL4nkcode also said, it needs to put "s" in {http://}

I am an imgur user and I usually uploaded it here before I am using the bbcode here. Recently, I cannot post pictures because it says invalid. Eventhough I did the 1st and 2nd tip in changing.

What I did?

I downloaded the imgur app in my phone, I created an account here and sign in.

Follow this steps:
Open the imgur app, then click the upload button. It shows below.


Next, click desired picture from your gallery and select "next"

Next step, you can public or hide your post. I preferred to select hidden and select "Upload"

Next, wait for your picture/s to upload. Then, go to your profile and look for your upload picture/s

Here is the tricky part because I realized that copying the link in upper left part of screen gave me an invalid picture.

So what I do? I press the picture (long press) until this appear.


When it appears, select the "copy url" and it will give you the correct bb code.

I hope it helps you.

Unfortunately this does not apply for iPhones. (Sorry a bit off topic here).

[suchmoon]

Thanks suchmoon, you're right if I quote the posts and enter the imgur links into my browser it does indeed pull up the pictures. Unable to do on the few that he locked but then it does seem strange that all of WoodCollector's photos show the invalid image. Every single one.

You can still extract it from locked posts too: right click the image, copy image location (in Firefox; might be different in other browsers) or open the image in a new tab, and take the URL from there:

https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F6vY076t.jpg&t=111&c=xxx

This is the URL you want: http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F6vY076t.jpg

Replace %3A with ":" and %2F with "/" or just take the file name (highlighted above) and put it into a known good imgur URL. You'll end up with this:

https://i.imgur.com/6vY076t.jpg

Or you can run the URL through something like https://www.urldecoder.org/ (I'm not endorsing this site and will not take responsibility if it steals your money).


As for why... only theymos can tell for sure by checking what imgur is returning (some kind of 400 or 500 error page perhaps).